After three years of keeping mum, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair granted an interview with the U.K. Guardian (you can read the interview here).
The highlights of the interview — as far as the Guardian is concerned — are here
The story leads with Blair saying “I knew Gordon Brown would be a disaster.” Leading most people to ask, “then why did you support him?”
Oh, right… politics. Blair says lots of other politician-type things, and in the end you’ll get the sense that his main criticism of Gordon Brown is “he’s not me.”
Over the course of his career, Tony Blair has been compared to President Bill Clinton — both charismatic liberals who effectively led their parties to power by moving to the political center. Blair’s comments in the interview make him sound a lot like Clinton.
But Blair’s role as a liberal is tarnished by his insistence on helping President George W. Bush invade Iraq in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on the U.S.
Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with the attacks of September 2001.
The left-leaning readership of the Guardian isn’t very forgiving on this topic, and in the interview Blair is unapologetic — although he makes a point of saying he’s working in the Middle East toward “religious interfaith.”
This interview is the first whiff of Blair before his memoirs are published. While discussing his memoirs, he sounds especially Clintonesque: “I wrote it myself, in longhand.”
Gee, just like Abe Lincoln!
But let me say this about that. Longhand? Really? You’re a world leader and you don’t know how to type? You wrote this stuff out and then had to pay someone else to type it? And that typist had to get security clearances and was paid how much? Just because TONY BLAIR DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO TYPE?
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